HotelTonight has been awesome there. You can get a representative on live chat and resolve most issues while you're still en-route from the airport.
On one hand, I am hopeful Airbnb will be able to learn from HotelTonight, but in reality, it seems most acquisitions end up with the acquired company diffusing into nothingness :(
The most obvious example I had using it was when I missed a flight and it was rebooked for the next morning. I was tired and I remember getting in a cab/Uber and finding out the friend who dropped me off wasn't able to let me crash there for the night. Before we had left the airport I had booked a room nearby and could direct the driver there. The hotel was nice. I might have had to wait 10m for the hotel to receive a fax confirming my booking (faxing reservations seems to be pretty common with a lot of hotels).
There's no way I could have done that booking directly. It would have taken me 10x as long to figure out which hotels were nearby, near my cost, what rooms were available, and check out. I do those things when booking ahead of time, but they're also much harder to do on a phone.
I'll be bummed if it I lose this contingency.
I just pulled up the reservation. It was in 2013 to a Fairfield/Marriott 3 miles from the airport.
For an example of the types of hotels, the other two bookings I've made were to Sonesta ES Suites in 2014 (during a surprise blizzard) and a Four Points/Sheraton in 2015.
If I had status or points I'd probably check out that chain first. Since I don't, sticking with a single chain isn't the most convenient or the cheapest.
(Not affiliated with AirBnb, but I had a chat with the tech lead of their business travel team last year).
The HotelTonight acquisition seems like it's a way to more rapidly scale their hotel inventory than anything else, although I suppose last-minute travel may simply be better served by hotels than home-sharing.
There's a lot of cases where a hotel makes sense, such as short trips (especially if it's just one night), or business travel (some companies have policies that exclude non-hotel stays from reimbursement for safety concerns), and so on.
You don't want to send these customers elsewhere.
I just pulled it up for Seattle and the Kimpton Monaco is up for $115, $140 after taxes and fees. From the Kimpton website it's $208 or $264 after taxes and fees. So about half off, pretty good deal! This was just the first one in the list, there may be better deals.
Same price across all 3 sites.
Chances are, if you see a price lower than the major travel sites, they're losing money. In this case, they're the same price.
5. Find a Lower Rate. If you find a lower rate on an eligible, non-IHG website within 24 hours of making your reservation on the IHG direct channel, and it is more than 24 hours before the standard check-in time for the hotel where you made your reservation, tell us about it by completing and submitting the online claim form (“Claim Form”). We will verify the lower rate by comparing the rate found on the IHG website or mobile app with the rate found on the non-IHG website for the same hotel, room type, stay dates, number of guests, and cancellation policy.
I'm actually shocked that they would do that, because now I will definitely shop around, I had erroneously thought their best price guarantee would save time.
Edit: I'm going to have to retract my comments about cheapest price being on official hotel brand websites. I did a cursory search and find many cheaper options on Hotel Tonight (and expedia) for same day reservations than the brands, and while I haven't looked at all the brand's best price guarantees, at least IHG's exempts them from having to provide the lowest price within 24 hours of checkin, so it seems like a loophole to let them dump rooms for cheaper on third party websites day of arrival.
I didn't mean they were the first to do deals but nobody cares about that anyway. Users only care if it works for them, and HT has one of the smoothest apps with some of the biggest discounts. When I started using HT years ago, I could book a room in less than a minute at a lower price than any other online source.
Anyways, as to the original point, they might have lost money on some deals but not all of them, and this is directly from private hotel owners I spoke with.
Found one article mentioning this [1].
Edit: but could be these don’t apply to last minute or same day reservation. Looks like for example Hotels.com best price guarantee excludes these.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2018/sep/15/australians-t...
Edit: I'm going to have to retract my comments about cheapest price being on official hotel brand websites. I did a cursory search and find many cheaper options on Hotel Tonight (and expedia) for same day reservations than the brands, and while I haven't looked at all the brand's best price guarantees, at least IHG's exempts them from having to provide the lowest price within 24 hours of checkin, so it seems like a loophole to let them dump rooms for cheaper on third party websites day of arrival.
Have found the same for airline flights. Google Flights showed me a flight on Delta and provided a link that was much cheaper than I could find on their own site.
Absolutely no problems with either reservation. Not sure why people would go direct unless it's their employer's policy or something.
If you’re a biz traveler and your flight is delayed or getting in late the comfort of knowing you can enter a hotel that is big, easy to find, and lobby open and attended to 24/7 is much more comforting than anything you can book on Airbnb. It’s hard to argue with.